SURVEY IN THE NANDA DEVI DISTRICT SURVEY IN THE NANDA DEVI DISTRICT BY E. E. SHIPTON Read before the Alpine Club, l\1arch g, 1937 OUNTAINEERS will have been interested to learn that the Survey of India is now engaged on a new !-inch map of the mountain regions of Kumaon and Garhwal. Previous surveys, as produced on the present !-inch sheets 53 N and 62 B, had been confined almost entirely to the popu­ lated and revenue-producing areas in or near to the great arterial valleys. Most of the glacier-cov~red country and the remoter valleys of these sheets are very sketchily drawn, in many places, indeed, so sketchily as to bear no resemblance whatever to the ground in question. Over much of the country, too, it has been found necessary to extend the primary triangulation. While engaged on this task in the Badrinath-Kedarnath range, Major Osmaston found that the whole trunk of the Gangotri Glacier was, in fact, several miles W. of the position allotted to it on the map. I hope that now at last we shall have a final solution to the topographical problems of this area. which have excited so much discussion as a result of the various expeditions which have recently brought back a lot of vague data about the range. The usual method employed for hill surveys in India is plane­ tabling by Indians, 'vho are each responsible for a section of the area. These men work with remarkable speed and neatness and, under the close supervision of their officers, they produce very good work. But in the high Himalaya they are faced by unusual difficulties which they are not used to. Not being . trained mountaineers they have great difficulty in moving thei_r parties about in the glacier regions and in reaching suitable stations. Owing to the peculiar difficulties presented by the country round Nanda Devi it was decided to depart from the usual practice and to send Major Osmaston, who is in charge of these mountain surveys, to carry out a photographic survey of the basin drained by the Rishi Ganga. As I had made a reconnaissance of the region in 1934? the Survey Department invited me to accompany the party in order to assist Major Osmaston with the route and in the selection of suitable stations . • 1 A.J. 47· s8-75. SURVEY IN THE NANDA DEVI DISTRICT A Wild photo-theodolite and 100 plates were taken as well as a plane-table. I took with me the Watts-Leica photo-theodolite belonging to the R.G.S., partly to supplement the main survey, and partly in order to give a further test to this novel instrument. Six Sherpa porters were brought from Darjeeling, including Angtharkay. The name Sherpa has become almost generic for all porters engaged in Darjeeling. Actually one of these men, Gyalgen, came from two months' journey north of Lhasa. We left Ranikhet on August 27, 1936. We had to take an un­ usual route to the Kuari Pass, as one of the bridges on the Wan route had been carried away by floods. We had terribly bad weather aJl the way to Joshimath. The rains reached their climax on the night of August 29 and our camp was flooded out. Later we heard that IO inches of rain had fallen in Mussoorie that night. Incidentally, the zgth was the day on which Nanda Devi was climbed! We reached Joshimath on September 3 and left again on the 6th. On the 7th v1e camped at Lata, near the mouth of the Rishi Ganga. As we were sitting in camp a bearded and tattered figure appeared rushing down the steep path. This proved to be Peter Lloyd, the first of the returning Nanda Devi party. Frotn him we heard of their splendid achievement. In my opinion the climbing of Nanda Devi is perhaps the finest mountaineering achievement which has yet been performed in the Himalaya ; certainly it is the first of the really difficult .Himalayan giants to be conquered. This expedition was a model of what such an expedition should be ; the party was a team consisting exclusively of mountaineers ; they avoided the great mistake which, to my mind, nearly all the major Himalayan expeditions since the war have made, and did not handicap themselves with a vast bulk of stores and superfluous personnel. Each man was prepared to carry loads up to any height, and indeed all were called upon to do so during the most arduous part of the climb ; above all, they avoided newspaper publicity. I was delighted to hear that Tilman had been one of those to reach the summit. He had accomplished more than his share of the donkey work, having earlier in the year ascended the Rishi Nala and dumped provisions in the ' Basin' and then returned, all the way to Ranikhet, to organize the transport of the party. Later that evening Graham Brown turned up. The rest of the party we met on the cliff track to Durashi, except for Tilman and Houston who had crossed a very difficult pass to Milam ' Longstaff's col.' The passage of the Rishi gorge was now quite devoid of diffi­ culty. There were cairns at every turn, a small but adequate SURVEY IN THE NANDA DEVI DISTRICT 29 path wound across the steep slopes and any rock steps were cleared of loose rock and earth ; above all, it was now not necessary to hunt for a way. The monsoon was still active and we had a lot of bad weather. However, when we reached the basin on September r6 the days were gloriously fine and the nights clear and frosty. The rivers were already fast sinking to their low autumn level and they presented us with no difficulties. Osmaston decided to tackle the Northern section of the basin first. I was keen to examine the ridges and valleys leading from the main basin up to the peaks bounding the western flanks of the Rhamani and Bagini Glaciers as we had not had the oppor­ tunity in 1934 of exploring this area. This I was able to do while Osmaston was mapping this part of the basin. The peaks in this vicinity are mostly composed of a beautiful pale granite, and soar to their 21 ,ooo ft. in clean curving lines, supported below by wonderfully carved ice flutings. Tensing, one of our Sherpas, had developed some sort of fever in the Rishi Nala and every day for more than a fortnight he ran a very high temperature often as much as 105°. Even when he had recovered he was no more than a passenger as the fever left him very weak and thin. Owing to this we kept on two of the Lata men who had accompanied us into the basin. They worked splendidly and with a little training would be as good as the Sherpas. It is quite time that someone undertook the task of training these people of Garhwal as mountaineers. There is any amount of splendid material in the higher valleys. They have one tremendous disadvantage, however, and that is that their religion forbids them to eat either with Europeans or anything cooked or touched by Europeans or Indians of other castes. When a party is engaged in a long and difficult task, this taboo would produce an impossible situation. With the Sherpas, I am in the habit of eating out of the same dish and drinking out of the same mug, and no one loses caste or feels embarrassed. Later in the year when we were employing some Dotial porters and the party ran short of food, the Dotials, who had finished their own food, allowed themselves to become feeble with hunger rather than eat the rice which we had been carrying in our rucksacks. Angtharkay always becomes infuriated by this prejudice, and taunts the victims unmercifully. We had a delicious camp by the lake at the junction of the two great glaciers of the Northern section. We had brought a goat . with us from Lata, and at this camp \Ve gave orders for it to be executed. It was a sad business as we had all become very attached to the animal. It had shared with us the fatigues of a SURVEY IN THE NANDA DEVI DISTRICT long journey and the warmth and comfort of our caves and camp-fires. It had been no easy task getting it up the gorge, and Angtharkay, who had been its keeper and principal helper, was particularly distressed at the idea of killing it and had defended its life for some days with arguments for keeping it alive the chief of these being that it might as well be made to carry its meat as far up the glacier as possible. That night, however, when eating fried liver and kidneys, he had no regrets. The execution itself was performed quickly by the two local men before the animal had time to bleat. We crossed the Great North Glacier, which was a severe trial to poor Tensing, who was now so weak that he found difficulty in walking. His temperature was still alarmingly high in the evenings, and we were beginning to get very worried about him. Hovvever, in the large ablation valley on the other side of the glacier we made a base camp from which the remainder of the Northern section could be reached. After a week's rest at this camp the fever left him. Angtharkay, Ang Dawa and I set out to climb a fine triangulated PEAK (21 ,770 ft.) on the watershed overlooking the Milan1 Glacier.